About

Hello! I’m Siaw Young, a senior-year CS student, due to graduate this September from Singapore University of Technology and Design. I write mostly JavaScript and Ruby, and occasionally Python and Java.

I’m obsessed with becoming a better developer, which is the main reason why this blog exists. I find that writing about code, instead of writing code, helps me clarify and crystallize concepts better. Although I do not expect a large audience for this blog, pretending like I’m writing for one forces me to articulate the same concept over and over again, which I find invaluable. Put another way, I’m harnessing the fear of being embarrassed publicly to learn better.

I’ve been very lucky to have been mentored by developers much better than I am (you know who you are), and for opportunities to work on multiple client projects even with my limited experience. Since late 2014, when I started coding seriously, I’ve been spending as much time as possible putting hours into the craft. I’ve worked up and down the web stack, doing design work in Sketch, front-end work in pure HTML/CSS or templating languages such as ERB and Liquid. I’ve used and have experience in multiple frameworks, including React, Redux, Rails, Express, and Django. I dabble in DevOps when I need to, such as deploying with Capistrano, or setting up servers with Chef, or setting up services like Nginx, Elasticsearch, and HAProxy. It sounds like I might be stretching myself too thinly, but I do this because I’m still in the exploratory phase, and also because I’m interested to see how every piece fits together, from the metal to the user.

Going forward, I’m really interested in picking up Haskell and/or Go, and on the DevOps side, I want to learn Docker seriously. My OSS contributions have also been rather anaemic, and I expect to contribute more in the future.

I’m going to have to start looking for real jobs soon, so do contact me if you’re looking to hire or talk! My portfolio and resume are available on request.